Stabs at my heart.
“It wasn’t your fault, Sy.”
He nodded, said, “I know,” but he didn’t believe me. He had carried the guilt on his shoulders since the day he found out, and I doubted he’d ever put it down.
In time, that would be okay, though. I was certain of it. If going stillward had taught me anything, is that one could make loss a part of themselves and live on without needing to be stuck.
After all, we were only given a little bit of time here on this realm. It was our duty to make every minute count.
Finally, Silas offered me his hand, and I took it. We both stood up.
“I have a proposition to make,” I told him. “I would very much like for you to agree to be my best friend.”
He slowly laced his arm around mine, and we made our way toward the open glass doors, too.
“Agree? I thought I already was.” He gave me a look. A suspicious look. “You are mine, anyhour, whether you agree to it or not.”
Cheeks flushed, I nodded and grinned and nodded again. “Then it is settled.”
And indeed, it was for the rest of our lives.
“Are you ready?”March asked, holding my hand like he knew exactly how much I needed to be grounded.
Sometimes—only sometimes—I still felt like I was falling down an endless hole with flashes of colors and shapes spinning all around me—or wasIspinning around them?
I could never be too sure, but the quickest thing to help was March.
The colors of his eyes, all the shades of red and rust hidden in those spheres that had become the entire world for me in all kinds of twisted realities and shifted timelines. The way he smiled at me when nobody was looking, like he belonged to me fully. The way he held my hand like it was the most important thing he’d ever hold.
And how he saw me—his memory that was still in my head. How I smiled sitting there at that bench. How he felt while he analyzed me.
If I had to put the feelings into words, I’d say they all translated intoeverything is perfectly okay.
“To see them? Yes,” I answered honestly, resting my head over his shoulder.
When Silas and I came back from meeting the RedQueen, he was already there, sitting at the stairs of the hospital building that was just around the corner from the inn where we were currently living. I’d been over the moon, had jumped in his arms so fast Silas had blushed, and we’d told him all about the meeting right there.
When Silas went in to see Reggie, we stayed out there, sitting on the stairs, watching a few kids play near a fountain several feet away…and waiting.
For my parents, whose carriage was about to arrive any minute now. The wide road ahead of us was busy enough so that a carriage passed every few minutes, and every time it did, my heart jumped.
But my parents weren’t here yet.
“And to tell them that you won’t be joining them back home?” March asked, and I about passed out sitting.
“Not so much,” I muttered, closing my eyes for a moment.
When I opened them, a carriage was just turning the corner, and it was the same feeling all over again—but it wasn’t my parents. The carriage continued to the other side of the cobbled street and disappeared behind another building.
March chuckled that sound I adored, and when he did, it was like the last two days hadn’t happened at all, like I hadn’t been waiting for him every second of every day like he was my lifeline. Like he’d always been right there beside me.
“Don’t worry, Velvet. They’ll understand.”
Velvet,he said, and each new time I was reminded of how much I loved it.
I smiled a little against his shoulder. “My father will cry.”
“That’s okay. Parents cry,” March said.
